The use of intraocular implant lenses has been highly developed in recent years, especially in connection with the removal of cataracts, and such operations are now common medical procedure. In such procedures it is desirable to minimize the size of the incisions which must be made to insert and position the lens in the eye, in order to reduce healing time and minimize any chance of wound failure.
Most previous implanting techniques have required that the incision which is made in the eye have a width equal to or greater than the diameter of the implant lens, so that the lens can be inserted through the incision. Recently techniques have been developed for "folding" or otherwise reducing the width of certain lenses prior to incision, then inserting the folded lens through the incision and unfolding it within the eye, see Bohn, "Soft IOL Technology", Ocular Surgery News, Mar. 1, 1987, page 1, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,636,210 to Haffer, issued Jan. 13, 1987. However, so far as I am aware there has not previously been known a technique whereby a lens could be folded and held in the folded condition by a retainer which does not add significantly to its size, inserted into the eye in the folded configuration with the retainer around it, and the retainer thereafter released as by severing it within the eye so that the lens could be unfolded within the eye, and wherein the resiliency of the lens itself effects unfolding with only minimal manipulation required for control of the lens as it unfolds.